Deneuve & Téchiné

This spring, we spotlight the decades-long association between screen legend Catherine Deneuve and a giant of French auteur cinema, the writer-director André Téchiné. Viewers of our Patrick Dewaere series caught an initial glimpse of this triumphant collaboration with Hôtel des Amériques, Téchiné’s first film with Deneuve. Though Hôtel des Amériques was the director’s fifth feature, Téchiné has often referred to it as his “second first film,” a new beginning in large part owed to Deneuve’s talent and fame. Over the next four decades, Téchiné and Deneuve would make seven features together, five of which will be screened in this series: Scene of the Crime, Thieves, My Favorite Season, The Girl on the Train and In the Name of My Daughter. 

Just as Deneuve helped Téchiné to find his voice as a filmmaker of passion, dissemblance, and fiery family dynamics, Téchiné allowed Deneuve to transcend and redefine her already iconic image by offering her roles that demanded she tap previously unplumbed depths of complexity, vulnerability, and desire. While all the films in the series stand out for Téchiné’s uncanny ability to explore multilayered relationships through emotionally volatile performances, My Favorite Season and Thieves find Deneuve and Téchiné at their absolute peak—both films are unmissable masterpieces of a 1990s golden age of French cinema.